


Don't Let Them See You Sweat

by dancinbutterfly



Series: Justified [14]
Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Law Enforcement, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, BDSM, Backstory, Emma-Centric, F/M, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Non-Consensual BDSM, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Orgy, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rape/Non-con Elements, Undercover Missions, but none of it is graphic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-15 12:21:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28688586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancinbutterfly/pseuds/dancinbutterfly
Summary: Emma Cullen loves her husband, desperately, but finding him had been a long, complicated road. It's led her to where she is now, on her way to Bumfuck, Texas to take down some human scum and that's exactly how she wants it.
Relationships: Emma Cullen/Matthew Cullen, Matthew Cullen/Other
Series: Justified [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/719169
Comments: 4
Kudos: 5





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [decoy_ocelot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/decoy_ocelot/gifts).



> Yall, i've been working on this installment for...jfc 3 years? Minimum 3 years but I'm throwing the first part of this out here now to give me incentive to finish the back end. It is *pinches fingers* this close to being done and has been for ages but I keep not doing it. Well, fuck it, its 2021. We've got time.
> 
> Decoy Ocelot is of course the reason this exists at all and this is very much for them.
> 
> Heads up, I wrote this BEFORE all the *handwaves at the state of the USA* bullshit so any resemblance to existing democracy-shaking completely unfounded conspiracies is _purely coincidental._

> **Carol Johnson:** There have been some threats.  
>  **Mags Bennett:** Oh, well, that's just awful.  
>  **Carol Johnson:** Part of the job, I suppose.  
>  **Mags Bennett:** Yeah, it's not easy being a strong woman. Take it from me. But you just keep doing what you're doing. Don't let them see you sweat.  
>    
> 

\- **Justified** 2.08 _The Spoil_

__

Special Agent Emma Cullen had a small courthouse wedding in her hometown four years into her tenure as a federal agent, a month before transferring from Nevada to California. The only colleagues informed of her marriage was the special agent in charge of her division and her spotter from the bad old undercover days, Wendell. Her only guest was a friend she’d made on the same undercover assignment where she’d met her husband, a rare gem in the form of Cadence Masters, a socialite who had somehow found it in her to not only accept her real identity but forgive all her lies when everything came to a head and refused to be denied the chance to be a maid of honor even over what most people would view as betrayal. Her father stood silently at her side her as her most steadfast witness. She didn’t change her last name after she left for the coveted post of Los Angeles. 

She’s not ashamed of the meet-ugly that brought her the love of her life. She would choose him over anything. _Anything._ But she loves her career and, well, that career brought her to her Matthew through the thickest sort of sludge. Most civilians can’t understand and most of her fellow LEOs just won’t even try. The path of most resistance has been par for the course for her career and it doesn’t surprise anyone who’s ever worked with her. So it was safer for him to take hers instead. And if he could have afforded it? She wouldn’t have put her husband on her health insurance for one less string tying him to the target she’s put on her back.

It’s nothing, those compromises and sacrifices, to protect him. To find a way to be with him, marry him, keep him safe.

Her life with Matthew is precious, and fragile. They’ve come too far, a million miles from where they started.

~*~*~

_  
Emma begins her career as a Special Agent in the Lake Tahoe Basin satellite office of the Nevada branch. Her particular skill sets and test scores don’t offset her rookie status quite enough to distinguish her as a star and put her in at the smack dab in middle of the pack of the Organized Crime department._

_Wait. That’s not quite true._

_Her FBI career as a Special starts in the Omaha office in Cyber Crimes. She’s very good with a lead and she does extra work. Unfortunately everything she pulls up is are endless Johnny Gosch-style national or global child prostitution ring email tips (because this is Nebraska, so of course it is) about allegedly kidnapped kids who are almost always runaways who typically pop-up in Des Moines, or Sioux Falls or Kansas City, maybe,_ maybe _Chicago or referrals from the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League referrals to totally legit Neo-Nazi/Aryan/racist hate group sites that technically are obeying the law so long as they don’t insight violence. No one really wants to hear about what the white supremacists are doing when she sends it over to Joint Terrorism Task Force. That doesn’t stop her from referring them because that’s her fucking job and also? Fuck those people. Since standard proceedure doesn't really do anything so she mostly takes them down via TOR browsers off the clock._

 _The rest of her work is all forensic accounting and it’s painfully boring because it’s Nebraska and_ nothing happens in Nebraska _. Even when it does, it always gets kicked up the ladder to Organized Crime or White Collar before she can have any fun at all._

_Needless to say, she spends a lot of her time bored. She alienates her colleagues who like how slow the work flow is pretty quickly and has never had much of a social life anywhere but back in New Mexico (that was really just her dad and Leni Frankel, who she's been casual friends with her whole life due the the convenience of living next door to each other their whole lives and a joint dislike for boybands that had unified them against their classmates in third grade). She’s not good at being bored so she fills her off-hours DDOSing hatespeech websites, practicing shooting at any of the five hundred ranges that seem to liter the Nebraska landscape as frequently as billboards with dire warnings of Hell and the impending apocalypse and watching documentaries about cryptids._

_She lasts there less than six months because her overachieving gets her noticed by a higher up who decides that she “isn’t a good fit” for the office and suggests she be transferred to somewhere “a little bit higher energy.”_

_She buys him a fruit basket her last day and a gift certificate to the only independent movie theater in town because holy shit. The guy needs some culture in his life and one good turn deserves another._

_Thanks to him, her real career begins in the scut work of the White Collar division of the Lake Tahoe field office. A little mountain city like that should have been slow and boring, but unlike Omaha, Lake Tahoe was crawling with bloody-handed muckity-mucks a solid 70% of the year. It was a treasure trove of repulsively opulent, never-used winter homes acting as tax-shelters to be investigated the other half. She was good at reading paperwork and got along really well with the hunting-and-fishing crowd here on the Nevada side of the line thanks to all the time her dad spent dragging her to every park within five hundred miles of Rose Creek to teach her survivalist skills, and she was one of the few truly pretty girls in the Bureau._

_So when White Collar formed a task force with Organized Crime, she got picked to work on it even though she was still a relative rookie. There was some restrained but wholly appropriate air-punching upon receiving word of the assignment but her enthusiasm was actually appreciated in Tahoe. Granted a few of the senior agents thought her dedication and hardworking was appealing in the awful, predatory “can’t wait to fuck that pussy” kinda way but along with how to clean a fish and skin a deer, Emma’s daddy had also taught her how to handle that sort of thing quickly and efficiently. All that was required was bringing one particularly unpleasant fellow agent to his knees with a few well placed comments and genital crushing hits in the gym for the rest of her colleagues to learn how important it was to maintain a respectful discourse. By the six month mark, she’d nipped all interpersonal issues in the bud. Best of all, she was working active cases and no one was telling Emma to sit down and shut up because, in Tahoe, closing the case was more important than subjugating or banging her._

_The task force was kind of weird though. It didn’t seem to have a goal for a year after she joined it. The general goal seemed to be working together agency wide and with local law enforcement to build RICO against the rich and corrupt in one of the quietest and wealthiest party cities no one ever talked about but that was it. A whole lot of aggregation and not much else. Of course, aggregation turned out to be what the senior agents called “the fun stuff” aka plain clothes missions to the gatherings and parties of the resorts, hunting lodges, and ski chalets that made Lake Tahoe famous. They were very rich and the very rich carelessly kept terrible things on the laptops, phones and sometimes just lying around on counters, beds, and occasionally a bathroom sink beneath a small mountain of cocaine (which Emma found hilarious because who even did cocaine anymore)._

_They train her in surveillence. First, in vans outside and then in various carefully placed spots around super-fancy hotels that are actually just chains all dressed up for rich company so they can get an earful of conference room conversation. Emma’s six assignment in the second year of a series of fruitless stakeouts is on a couch in a ritzy joint that is not a Ritz but in fact is really just a Hilton and it changes everything._

_Emma knows for sure the stakeout is a Hilton subsidiary because when Paris shows up, (yes, that Paris,) she doesn’t actually wait for anyone to come and get her things. She just sweeps in with her little dogs, her carryon, and goes straight to the elevator with a private key and not a word to anyone. Well, if what Emma is hearing over the scanner is right, she stops to take selfies with anyone who asks her, but she doesn’t interact with anyone on staff except to say hello and thank you and no, she won’t be needing anything and that they have a nice day and that she’ll call if that changes but that she’s hear to open a the thirty-fifth, sixth, and seventh Paris Hilton clothing stores in and around Tahoe and in other parts of Nevada (that cannot be right, Emma is sure, that cannot be possibly fucking right as there is no way there are already thirty-four other Paris Hilton stores on earth, there just can’t be) and that she’d like to not be disturbed._

_The woman is a bit older than Emma, it’s true, and alright, her great-granddaddy had a head start as a hotel tycoon but Emma vividly remembered back in school when the news was flooded with her infamous sex tape. She also remembers reports about a lot of drugs, numerous stupid remarks making international news and more than a few arrests but now she had clothing lines and other things that Leni would know about (she followed those kinds of things and every phone call was at least twenty-five to thirty percent Leni rehashing her favorite celebrity gossip) including, Emma was pretty sure, some kind of perfume and at least a small stake in the family business._

_For a long time Emma sat in that lobby repeating “Thirty-seven” silently to herself like a Clerks clip on repeat and totally spacing on any possible useful intel coming from the supposed real estate development meeting down the hall. The haze hung around her the rest of the day as she went over what had been only a few moments as she sorted out reality from fiction, her expectations from her collected data, what she saw from what she heard and came to the conclusion that regardless of what that woman was in her private reality, she possessed a kind of terrifying confidence and power that Emma wanted. She couldn’t pull from generations of immense wealth and vast celebrity connections but she didn’t have a sex tape and illicit behavior to get over either. She had the law and her skills to lean on and the rest was just practice._

_If a woman who was known for saying “That’s hot” and once landed face down in pig shit on national television could arrive in Nevada to open a thirty-seventh designer store with her name on it in front of Emma’s very fucking eyes? She could move past wire duty in the next six weeks. Two months tops._

_Emma managed it by spending an entire paycheck on two outfits and a phone then sliding up next to Paris at the hotel bar (that she really shouldn’t have been at) as soon as she got off that very night._

_“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be putting this on you. I’m just trying. So. Hard. You know?” She remembers when the family cat died of heart failure to find the tears for this. “I had to make up my exams so I couldn’t go to Gestadt with my family for Christmas,” she lies. “Mindy was supposed to meet me here as soon as she was done with finals but her boyfriend proposed and they totally flaked off to Maui so now I’m stranded until after New Year’s. I mean, I could go back to Cambridge but there’s no one there either and I just don’t know where to go to meet people.” She remembers burying Mittens stiff little body wrapped in a towel in the backyard and brings it home with real, actual tears. “I’ve never been here before.” She’d wipes her eyes with the heel of her hand, careful of the manicure and doing her best to showcase the dangling diamond tennis bracelet she’d found in the county evidence lock-up and checked out for twenty-four hours before going off duty. “Daddy did say it was the place to go when you needed to get away from it all.”_

_Paris had been deeply, genuinely sympathetic and warm, pulling Emma into a tight hug that lasted a full fifteen seconds and involved hair-petting. When they broke apart, she’d gently patted the streaks of mascara off Emma’s face, given her small tube of mascara from her own clutch that she promised “won’t even run when you ugly cry, trust me, I’ve done extensive testing” and snatched her phone from her hand._

_Emma’s hands are full of bar napkins and mascara so Paris gets her contacts open before she could think to stop her, let alone do anything. She was glad she’d only programmed the numbers of her father, Leni, Caleb, and the Chinese place near her apartment programmed in since activating it a few hours earlier because, Jesus, any FBI numbers clearly labeled in her favorites would’ve been a rookie mistake._

_In the end, most of Emma’s work was done for her. All she had to do was listen to an extremely famous socialite chatter chatter about how skiing is only a good time if you’re sporty but Emma did look kind of sporty so this (the contact was creatively input as SkiBoy Sergei) was the only pro to go to because he actually knew what he was doing and he wouldn’t even try to sleep with you, unless you ask, explicitly, he was great that way and how every girl in this list (they all had a lipstick kiss emoji in front of their names, though some also had various combinations of smileys, sunglasses, thumbs ups, and strawberries whatever the hell those meant)were great for a party any night of the week and sometimes twice, the thumbs up girls were the best humans alive and would jump in front of a bullet for you and/or provide a solid alibi when needed, no questions asked but that only smiley face girls could find you decent coke and girls with sunglasses knew where the good ecstasy was but everyone else had excellent booze because what is this Vail? Please._

_She never did say what the girls with strawberry emojis meant. When Emma asked, Paris hand put a gentle hand on her arm, squeezed it once and said, “If you get lonely enough to hit up one of them, I’m sure you’ll figure it out, girl.”_

_Emma hadn’t pushed it._

_She handed the phone back with a smile and a flourish that showed off the little snowmen painted on her fingers. “There’s a good one on Thursday though. You have to come. I’ll die if you’re not there. I’ve already let everyone know you’re coming. You’re in the group text now and I sent you the address.” She gave a genuine hug and something that isn’t quite a kiss on the cheek and then she’s off with her dog, talking on her phone about something that sounds like…radio parts maybe? Emma thought she heard the word transceiver and possibly “allied”? Emma had no idea. What she knew is that she’d done more in one day off than her entire task force managed in six months and while she would not gloat, she was going to the party on Thursday._

_Once she clears it with her boss. There are lines and as excited as she is about the new development? Emma loves her job and she will not be crossing them._

_~*~*~_


	2. Chapter 2

_Her boss looks through her phone and runs each number through the tracer that they probably shouldn’t have (thanks President Bush) and comes back to her pissed. “No more off book ops,” he declares._

_“I’m sorry, sir. I saw an opportunity and I took it.”_

_“Yeah. I noticed.” He rubs his temples like her words pain him. “And now I have a potential wellspring of intel and a very limited number of options.”_

_“I got invited.” She forces her arm to abort the move to wave at her phone. “I really am in the groupchat. It’s insanely busy, sir. I can’t really keep up.” She’s a texter and all but these people are insane. She’s had to mute her phone because it was literally pinging so often she couldn’t think. “It seems like Thursday’s going to be the first big party of the season and they’re excited to meet me.”_

_“Yes,” he grits out. “Which is what I meant by limited. You’re a junior agent. This sort of thing usually goes to someone with a little more…experience.” He sighs, then shakes his head, then smiles. “But good work. We’ve been trying get into this group for eighteen months so it looks like you have a party Thursday.”_

_“Do I get a shopping budget, sir?” Emma asked. “I can’t just show up at a party like this in Juicy couture sweats and my ASU hoodie.” She does not give a shiteating grin but it is a very near thing._

_“Don’t go crazy.”_

_“I’m sorry,” Emma laughs. “Have you actually done the legwork on any of these people, sir?” She waves a hand at the person of interest board in their little war room. Not a single one of them has a net worth lower than nine digits, although most of it isn’t liquid (as if that somehow makes it better.) “Crazy isn’t their middle name. It’s their title, surname, and the degree they pursued at a private university abroad.”_

_“Walk away from me now before I tell Accounting to put a limit on the company card in your wallet. Come back when you’re done. The amount of paperwork you have waiting is going to make you wish you were dead. ”_

_“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir!”_

_So she gets to dress up and play the new-money socialite, had permission from work to drink fine wine (and when she was on the California side of the lake smoke exceptional weed) in the name of making friends with the girls who controlled the men who ran half the world, a set infamously tight with their money but loose with their dicks. She spent the first month or so just making nice with the Shelbys and Poppys and Taylors and Madisons and Aubreys and Darcys and other daughters, wives, and mistresses of CEOs, CFOs, and corporate officers and owner-operators of businesses and concerns she wouldn’t have even imagined if not her placement in White Collar._

_It’s a bummer that these women were all so nice and she’s working to destroy their lovely upper crust lives. She was enjoying herself. She’s learning how to snowboard and getting in shape in one of the Taylors’ father’s indoor olympic swimming pool and having her food bought for her by men who wanted to fuck her so often she doesn’t even have to expense her meals before heading back out with the girls to do it all again. She got to be shallow and watch Shonda Rhimes TV shows and the Bachelor and discuss boys and girls and movies and be a creature of leisure. It was also, really, the most time she’d ever spent with other women in her life._

_It was nice. It was a goddamn lie. But nice._

_That’s not to say she didn’t work. She cloned so many hard drives while “sending a quick email” or “checking twitter” on a borrowed laptop she literally lost count. She took “selfies” with targets in the background that were closer than most telephoto lenses could manage. Hell, she even fucked her way into the penthouse suite of a hedge fund manager who her boss was 85% sure was a go-between for a Russian crime syndicate and an American real estate concern in the mid-west buying up foreclosures._

_He’d eaten her pussy for a solid hour, bless his corrupt little heart, only to turn out to be a two-pump chump. He’d locked himself in the shower in shame after for about forty-five minutes to hide the crying. It gave her time to get absolutely everything and to contemplate why men put so much of their self-worth in the act of fucking when she’d had two perfectly decent orgasms from the oral and really would have considered the whole thing a win if she were judging based on pleasure alone._

_It made for a good story to bring back to the elite social scene of Tahoe (minus the cyber theft part). Cadence, Emma’s favorite of the group of sparkling socialites she had mentally dubbed Toasts of Tahoe, had laughed for a solid two minutes before sharing her own stories of disastrous premature ejaculators gone-by, of which there were apparently many. She took it as a compliment. Emma couldn’t blame her._

_On the verge of her third 30th birthday, Cadence was distractingly attractive. She had the coveted Hollywood body and was a combination of peaches-and-cream skin and gently curling black hair contrasting with shockingly green eyes. If she weren’t so busy trying to pull her family warehouse and freight company from the claws of a rival sibling (“Half-brother, Emmy, fucking half. His mother was a soul-sucking monster who drove my mom to an early grave and now it’s like his cock is better qualification for the job than my MBA from Wharton? He studied exercise science at CSU Long Beach and didn’t even graduate.”)? She could easily have gone down the fashion model route and surprised no one._

_Cadence was the one who texted to check-in on Emma when she disappeared for forty-eight hours on FBI mandated leave. Cadence was the one who invited her over to eat pizza and watch Netflix in pajamas with no makeup and no pretense. Cadence was the one called (not texted but actually called) Emma at 3am and asked her keep her company while she picked up Plan B at the 24-hour Walmart then reached for Emma’s hand as she took the little pill with milkshakes from the 24-hour McDonalds, even though it was snowing outside the car. Cadence was the closest thing to a best friend Emma had ever had and lying to her was the only part of the job she hated but she had to because of all the contacts in her phone, Cadence was the one who saw to it that Emma never, ever missed a party._

_Cadence is the one who invites her to the party where it all falls to shit. “You don’t have to come to this one,” Cadence says. “Fuck, if Camden weren’t going to be there, _I_ wouldn’t be going.” She’d worries the straw of her iced mocha between her teeth. “It’s going to be so fucking sketch. It’s like this close,” she holds her thumb and fingers pressed together in a smushed OK symbol, “To a sex party but like, you can’t call it that because it’s not even close classy enough. It’s more like, a pop-up brothel with hors d’oeuvres. We’re talking cash-only hookers and gay-for-pay rentboys to your left and bring-your-own-gimp slave swaps and dominatrix-run submission training on your right instead of nice, clean keys in a bowl. ”_

_“Then I definitely can’t let you go on your own.” She really can’t. Aside from the fact that this sort of setting is, genuinely, the sort of situation she needs to be in, she absolutely cannot let Cadence go in to that sort of setting alone. “I can’t believe you’re evening thinking of it.”_

_She shrugs. “Laurent’s going to come with me.”_

_Emma does not tell her that Laurent is never going to leave his wife. She does not tell her that he is never going to love her the way she deserves. She does not tell her that he is a piece of shit who isn’t good enough for her (or his wife for that matter) not even on his best day. She doesn’t say any of those things because Cadence has a lot of friends who have already told her these things, friends who aren’t lying about who they are and why they’re in her life. Those friends have a leg to stand on where Emma does not._

_So she asks instead “Do you really think Laurent, of all people, is actually going to keep you safe if shit hits the fan?”_

_Cadence’s smile is cold and ugly. “He has to. I know where the bodies are buried,” she sighs and Emma likes her even more._

_Her boss is not happy about this. Then she reels off the guest list. He is still not happy but he puts a radio in her ear, hidden by her fabulous hair and insanely sparkly earrings. He also gets the tech side of their team to fit about five terabytes worth of small storage devices into a playbag that’s full of mostly leather handcuffs and riding crops and, oh hello, a really nice cosmetic kit from Chanel. He gives her a top ten list and wires her for sound. Well he doesn’t. A fellow female agent does because where her wires are going, they don’t need roads._

_Laurent picks them up at Cadence’s chalet. He’s a forty-eight year old Belgian national with twin second-grade girls securely ensconced in an actual Swiss boarding school and a French wife named Aurelie who he never saw who, Cadence told her, has a girlfriend in Europe and a boyfriend in South America. Between the five of them, they let the school do most of the raising of their daughters which Cadence frowns over, often, because she’s the product of 13 years at an all-girls prep school in Connecticut and a live-in nanny with a BA from a decent liberal arts school and no actual training (or real prospects) who had been her only source of genuine affection once when Camden’s mother drove her own mother into an early, alcoholic grave._

_“I’d take them out, if he married me. I like kids.” She’s said a dozen times in the fist full of weeks that Emma’s met her but it’s a fantasy and everyone who knew Laurent knew it._

_Aurelie was old money, a direct descendent some of the first colonists in West Africa and she’d personally had inherited a generations-old company with excellent mineral rights and mining interests that provided more returns in a quarter than Laurent would make as a commercial real estate developer in a lifetime. The only thing more strangling than the hold Aurlie’s family had over the chromate, salt, and gold in Sudan was the prenup her French Catholic family had drafted which was more complex than most international trade agreements._

_Separate lives were the best Laurent and Aurelie could hope for. Emma knew that wasn’t going to be enough. Cadence was going to give up at some point. She was too stubborn, too prideful, too hungry. She also had standards that were too fucking high if the way she liked to cough “war criminal” under her breath whenever Aurelie comes up is any indication._

_Granted, everything Emma knows about trade and labor in Africa she knows because Cadence rants about Aurelie’s family concerns and how they violet human rights but they sound legitimate. “Not that we’re spotless,” Cadence would always disclaim because this is Tahoe and no one’s hands are clean, “But our employees have houses and can eat and aren’t being murdered at regular intervals. Emmy, Jesus Christ.” She usually goes on a tear from there about how if she can just get control back from Camden, she can accept the latest union terms proposed and make real progress._

_These sort of things make Emma want to look into the international branch of the FBI after she finishes here. She doesn’t necessarily want to head to Africa (this relationship with Cadence and her knowledge of Aurelie’s contacts could present as a conflict of interest actually) but it’s definitely a wake-up call. She never knew before. Certainly not enough to care. Now she does and she knows enough to actively dislike Laurent for marrying Aurelie in the first place, for staying with her for her blood money and for continuing to fuck with her friend’s heart._

_Of course, she says none of this as she slides into the back of his stretch limo in a long shimmering rented blue Valentino gown that Cadence helped her pick out that is modest in the front but for the peek-a-boo of décolletage and scandalous in the back (perfect for hiding a wire). Laurent is handsome in a Gregory Peck-by-way-of-Peter Lorre sort of way. He kisses her hand and if she didn’t know him she would have been charmed. Instead, she has to resist wiping her hand on her hand on her fur coat. It’s real, actual arctic fox. It’s so warm and soft she could sink it to it. Taylor G. insisted she take it because “It is so two seasons ago, I was just going to drop it at the Salvation Army anyway but they’re fucking bigots. So you have it Emmy, at least someone will get to enjoy it. Besides, second-hand fur is technically ethical right?” The white fur looks amazing with her blue gown and she feels like the princess from the books her daddy used to read to her even if she’s heading to a party that is anything but a ball._

_“You ladies really shouldn’t be attending this,” Laurent sighs into a glass of Proseco, making that point even clearer. “It will be nothing but business and ugliness.”_

_“Well then you shouldn’t be going either,” Cadence saps. “Then I wouldn’t have to come.”_

_Laurent says something in sullen French which Cadence replies to in French that sounds like a slap and he sags. Emma doesn’t speak the language but she knows a spat when she hears it. She sincerely hopes they will be broken up by the end of the night. Cadence looks fantastic in a green and navy Georgina Chapman original and sapphires. It’s a perfect outfit to walk out on the slimeball in._

_“Ah, we’re here. Please, don’t embarrass me, girls. There are work associates here.”_

_“Aurelie’s work associates,” Cadence says under her breath because Laurent’s work is, really, more of a hobby and they both know it._

_“Mon chou,” he snaps._

_“Est-ce que je me trompe dans ma compréhension de la situation?”_

_“Non, ma cherie.”_

_“Alors sors de la putain de voiture et montre-nous.”_

_French is supposed to be a beautiful language but when Cadence speaks it, it is nasty and harsh. Emma has always thought of herself as straight but really, if Cadence asked her for anything in that French? She’d probably do it. Apparently, that kind of mean is a thing for her. Who knew?_

_Laurent melts under it too. So apparently it’s a thing for more than just her. It might just be a Cadence thing._

_It feels…strangely normal inside, at least at first. It’s just another party with men in suits and women in dresses like any of the elite Tahoe parties she’s been to since sliding into this assignment. There’s music that’s slightly too low to hear, alcohol is on every surface and the buzz of conversation and superiority fills the air._

_It quickly becomes apparent that this is not the standard mix-and-mingle over cocktails affair when she spots the husband of Taylor Y. getting a sloppy blowjob from a Viking of a woman in what Emma can now recognize as Versaci, the bodice pushed down to reveal a pair of spectacular if cosmetically enhanced breasts, in the foyer. Another woman, a stunning Japanese woman in an equally impressive dress, this one rucked up over her waist to reveal a black garter belt and not much else is bent over the back of the living room couch moaning like, well, a whore as a man, she thinks it’s MacKenzie’s older brother but she can’t tell from where she stands, plows her from behind. A young sandy-haired man, who cannot possibly be old enough to drink if he is in fact legal, lies draped on his back on a chaise, eyes closed as the father of one of the girls Emma went snowboarding with(maybe Taylor B.'s dad?) last week fucks him in sharp snaps. One long pale leg pushed up towards his chest and his teeth dig into his lower lip so hard that even from ten feet away she can see the flesh go white. A handsome black man with a neat goatee is frotting with Darcy's brother Darren on top of a pool table, although Emma hasn't seen Darcy anywhere yet._

_Yeah. It’s a whole different sort of party. There are more people, doing more things but after awhile, it all starts to blur together._

_She adjusts the diamond bald eagle broach (an impressive piece of tech from the R &D guys made mostly of conflict gems legally confiscated by the FBI and her sister agencies in illegal trade busts, blackmarket raids, and other asset seizures as evidence that Justice Department had repurposed in it’s infinite wisdom to towards the Good fight so that Emma could wear a pin camera in a piece that looked legitimately expensive enough that it surpassed gaudy and crossed over into status symbol) so that it sat perched, noble and a little ostentatious, atop her right boob with the ruby eye of America’s mascot aiming the camera lens a little straighter and to stealthily resettle said boobs in her industrial-strength bra. She straightens her earrings to settle her earpiece radio a little better in her ear canal then takes a deep breath because honesty is always the best policy with Cadence, to the very best of her ability. so she clears her throat and says, in her very best deadpan, “Well, I don’t know what I expected.”_

_Cadence bursts out laughing, the sound clear and bright through the haze of sex and darkness and several different types of smoke. “Dead dove,” she agrees. Taking Emma firmly by the arms she says, “Do not eat.”_

_Yeah. Emma doesn’t need to be told twice. This is really not to her taste. Damnit, sometimes she hates how much she loves her job._

_Cadence gives her a kiss on the cheek, shockingly chaste despite the sordid energy in the McMansion and gives her arms a brief squeeze. “I have my phone on. If you need to bail, do it and you call me the second you need me but I have to go find Cam and stop him from ruining our company.” She gives Emma a hug before turning away. “Laurie? Hey, Laurie, qu'est-ce que la fuck? ”_

_Emma isn’t offended. That kind of dismissal isn’t Cadence being rude. It’s a sign of trust. She knows that you heard her. You don’t need to be told twice. No, her attention is on Laurent now, God have mercy on him._

_“I swear to Christ, Laurie,” she growls, stalking away, her rage leaving a wave of sound behind her. “Si tu t'éloignes de plus de trois pieds avant que je trouve ce petit merde, tu seras trop désolé d'être désolé.”_

_“Oui, mon petite chou,” he sighs and trails after her._

_She vanishes down a hallway, Laurent at her heels and there’s a click in her ear. “Makes me wish I kept taking French after high school,” says Special Agent Ben Wendell, who’s been the voice in her ear at every one of these things so far. “Jesus.”_

_“Right? What the hell?” Emma says with her fist to her mouth like she’s covering a cough. A blonde waitress in the fluffy skirt of a French maid costume, six inch clear plastic heels, and no shirt to hide her pierced breasts glides past with a tray of champagne, jello shots in what might be Stuben shot glasses, and, thank fuck, mini bottled waters. Emma catches her by the arm and snags one of the waters before she can get away, all her years of law enforcement training making her relief at the crack of the safety seal that much more intense._

_“How’s your line of sight?” She asks as she brings the bottle to her lips._

_“A view straight into fucking Sodom. Seriously, Emma, I cannot believe this shit is hiding out here. I mean, you know this stuff’s in Vegas, obviously. You hear all the stories but this is Tahoe.” It’s hiding anywhere and everywhere there’s money to afford it, Emma thinks, looking around at the veritable sea of flesh._

_Junior agents don’t end up in this sort of position often. They’re being monitored, of course they are, but she’s just data-collecting. She’s been playing human scanner for months now, and she and Wendell have pretty much proven they can handle themselves at all the parties where she soaks up details that fall like mana from heaven._

_No, this is simply first time the situation has ever looked as ugly as she’s always known they really are. This sort of blatantly grotesque vice is usually more senior agent territory. Like Wendell said, Vegas stuff._

_She wanders the party alone for half an hour, just observing. She goes to the bar and gets a whiskey, something from the American South instead of the British Isles though she’s not sure what, and holds it in her hand as she wanders, sipping it because clutching the water makes her feel like a teenager at the prom without a date. People talk more when you have a drink in your hand anyway and the people not fucking someone do like to talk._

_She hits a stride after about two hours. Her shoes make her feel like she could take someone’s eye out with one kick and the dress really does make her feel like a million dollars and she knows how to talk to these people. She smiles and they smile back and as always try to one up themselves to impress the person they think she is, a socialite spending an extended vacation away from school hiding in the snow and spending her daddy’s money._

_For the most part, at this event that’s a mixture of typical business bragging and conquest declarations like “Did you see the little blonde in that silver number? Well she’s waiting for me upstairs as we speak. She’ll wait the whole night.” to “The things that Marie can do with a with a razor and a set of handcuffs will make you believe in God. You should go downstairs and watch. I would but I have to meet Harold by the bar in five, monopolizing son of a bitch.”_

_She’s feeling jaded to the sight and sounds of open sex when she meets a man of in his early forties with the kind of good looks that could only be described as slippery who introduces himself by his title rather than his name, Alderman of the South San Francisco City Council(and damned if Emma can’t hear each one of the capitals in his tone). She didn’t even know there was a South San Francisco. His smile is lazy, his gaze lingers on her cleavage, and around his wrist hangs the loop of a black leather leash which connected a D-ring in a matching black leather collar wrapped tightly around the neck of a pale young man who introduces as his pet, Maxie._

_“He’s been a bit of a bad boy lately, forgetting his place and the rules. He knows so much better,” the Alderman sighs, not turning to look at his pet._

_She follows his gaze and when she settles on the object of his, well, affection isn’t right, ownership is probably better, she wonders how he can possibly bear not look all the time. Maxie is clad in nothing but soft silk boxer briefs, an unforgiving chain harness, manacles in that same black leather his wrists connected to both harness and collar, and a spider gag. Even his feet are bare. His black hair hangs over his forehead and into his downcast eyes, no sign of product or adornment, just messy curls that make him seem even younger._

_“Art is meant to be seen and not heard, don’t you think?” The Alderman asks with a smile that makes her skin crawl. He turns and reaches down to take his pet’s face in his hand. The flinch he gives as the Alderman wipes away a trail of drool dripping from the corner of his lips past the gag is almost imperceptible but Emma notices._

_Noticing is her fucking job. Of course, so is managing a potentially explosive situation. So she smiles back and nods. “He is beautiful,” she agrees and that she can say with total honesty._

_The Alderman preens as if he had anything to do with the existence those cut-glass cheekbones and moonlight skin. He dips a finger inside the hole in the spider-gag, petting Maxie’s tongue. There’s a soft sound like someone holding back a heave but she only catches it because she’s looking for signals now._

_Emma does not read into the sight the way she wants (which would be to arrest this motherfucker for false imprisonment and see if she can’t provoke him into a resisting arrest along the way so she has an excuse to accidentally hit him somewhere it would hurt) and instead aims her tone for fascination, awe and, if she can swing it, arousal. If there’s one thing she’s learned since coming to Tahoe it’s that that these people like it when you are impressed with them._

_“I’ve never encountered anything like it,” she says which is true. Outside of the basement scene in Pulp Fiction and the hard drives she had to search for Cyber Crimes, she has never seen anything like what the Alderman has done to his pet. “I have to admit, I already feel tempted to steal him from you.” Also, totally true because she does want to steal him. She wants to play fairy queen and steal him away to somewhere safe where she could get him shoes, pants, and a fucking trauma counselor because she may be a junior agent but she’s been a law enforcement officer long enough to see that he doesn’t want to be here or anywhere near this man._

_“Quite the pretty possession, I know,” the Alderman agrees proudly. “But there’s no need to turn to criminality.” He gives her a wink that she figures is supposed to be playful sounds._

_“Oh?” It’s a good noncommittal response. Doesn’t agree or disagree, leaves him room to explain or dig himself a hole. She keeps his eyes on his quirking eyebrows. It’s easier than trying to meet his eyes or looking at the man trapped in the role of pet again._

_“You’re curious about him.” He flicks the leash and Maxie takes steps forward. His head gaze is still fixed on the ground but now that he’s closer, she can see his chest rising and falling under the chains of the harness and maybe hear them clinking over the soft pulse of music playing through the mansion._

_He hooks his finger in the back of the collar and gives him the leather a small, firm tug. He sinks to the Italian marble of the hallway they stand in without hesitation. He jerks a little as his knees lands on the hard stone and she sees him wince just the slightest bit. Another follows as the Alderman fists a hand in his hair._

_“You want to know what he does, what he could do for you, to you.”_

_“I don’t know,” Emma mumbles and brings her drink to her mouth. It’s more to hide her anger and grimace of revulsion. She can tell from his face that he thinks it’s titillation if his grin is any indication._

_“It’s alright. I know how he appears but surely you’ve looked in a mirror, my dear. I’m convinced that he won’t be able to resist you. No one’s that gay.”_

_She chokes on her whiskey and he beams at her._

_“Breathe,” says Wendell, ever the voice in her ear. “Cullen, just breathe.”_

_She can’t. She can’t fucking breathe. She’s too upset. She tries and all that she manages is a short exhale that sounds like “Oh?” and it must be enough. Thank fuck._

_“Well, Maxie’s a glittering gossamer fairy,” the Alderman mused as he twirled his thick brown mustache, smiling a little as the gesture jerked the leash and Maxie along with it. “And a fairy is built more to serve the satyrs at this bacchanal than the mermaids fair, like yourself.”_

_Emma swallows and it’s only only half acting. She could see the despair in his eyes, the grief and exhaustion. She could give him a break and didn’t mind bending Bureau protocol to do it._

_“Please, Alderman. He’d do it for you, wouldn’t he?” Maxie was obviously not one of the house escorts hired through the legal service here in Nevada. The Alderman was the client or whatever the hell of this beautiful, despairing man. She had to get him to agree to get Maxie the fuck away from him and that meant playing nice. She could play nice. She’s been playing nice for months._

_She presses her hand between her chest and noticed the Alderman’s eyes follow her fingers back into her cleavage. Yeah. She’d had a feeling this wasn’t about sex. If her tour on in Cyber taught her anything, it’s that it’s always about power with people like this. Always._

_“I mean, gay men marry women all the time. I should know, I’ve date enough of them in college.” She gives him wide eyes and asks, breathlessness she doesn’t have to fake, “Oh my god, wait, is he a gold star? ”_

_Beside them, Maxie seems to sink into himself and the Alderman smiles at her, reveling in his shame. Bingo. Power. Humiliation. Total control. That’s what this fucker likes. She gives him a sharks grin as she leans in, putting a hand on his arm like they’re friends, like they could ever be friends. “Does he even know how to fuck?” She asks, in the tone of voice that one would inquire after a relative’s cancer or a recently deceased pet. She lowers her voice just enough to give the impression that she thinks that the Alderman, not Maxie, has the answers to all her questions._

_The Alderman laughs, long and loud. “You know, I haven’t tried him out. You’ll have to let me know, won’t you?” He says cheerfully. “I think Maxie can be good for you. Won’t you Maxie? You know how to follow directions at the very least.”_

_Dark hair fell over his forehead as he stared at the ground. He nodded and she watched throat work under his thick leather collar._

_“That’s a good boy. Make me proud.” That made the beautiful man shudder so visibly even the Alderman took notice and reached out once more to commit another of those hideous pets inside his mouth, stroking his index finger over Maxie’s vulnerable tongue. “Oh, don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll do wonderfully. Maybe you’ll even earn a reward for once.”_

_Emma is very glad in that moment to never have been assigned to any form of Vice._

_“I’m sure he will.” She holds out her hand, displaying the rented rings, each with at least with eight karats of diamonds that are cumulatively worth more than her whole life. Her nails shine in the mood lighting, reflecting sheen of the understated French gel manicure she got with Taylor G that made her fingers seem delicate and elegant. For just a split second, she is shocked by the sight of her own ladylike hands. She hasn't been with this set long but already all the exfoliating, paraffin waxing, lotioning, and acid pealing gone a long way in replacing her weapon-calloused hands with those of a debutante. The result was goddamn magic if you asked Emma. She literally didn’t recognize her own fingers anymore._

_Now she she wiggles those glittering, shining, fully loaded hands at the Alderman thinking that if she didn’t like shooting things and hitting things so much, maybe she should have gone into acting because really, she doesn’t suck at this. “He’s just so pretty and I love pretty things.” And it's true, he is pretty. That makes one true thing in what is clearly going to be a disaster of a night._

_The Alderman smiles at her and she felt like she needed to scrape off all her skin. “Take lots of pictures, my dear. Did you know this place has its own cloud? Password is ‘letitsnow’ all word.” He takes her hand, kisses her knuckles, and slips the leash around her wrist. The soft black leather feels like it weighs a thousand pounds. When he squeezes her hand in gleeful commiseration, Emma feels the desire to shoot someone in cold blood for the first time. “Bring him back when you’re done and you can show me what you’ve taught him.” He smiles and then flicks his hand at them, dismissing them with the same interest as one would flick away a fruit fly._

_“Cullen,” Wendall says in her ear, “I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but whatever it is, it’s a bad fucking idea.”_

_“Shut up, shut up, I know,” Emma hisses under her as she tows the beautiful man along behind her. Maxie, for his part, doesn’t say anything. He can’t. There’s a ring gag holding back anything he might say about her talking to herself. She hates herself for the fact that, for the fifteen minutes it takes to find an empty room in one of the guest cottages at the back of the property, this is a profound relief._

**Author's Note:**

> NOTES!  
> 
> 
> * 1)Paris Hilton is [a.] a sexual abuse survivor in the form of that sex tape which released against her consent to the public [b.] a great sport who actively made fun of herself for years (Don't Believe me? Go watch her episodes of The OC and Supernatural and the movie Repo! The Genetic Opera where she literally plays a parody of herself in basically every one - 2 out of 3 ending with her character having a horribly violent downfall - and the entirety of the insanity that was The Simple Life then tell me she doesn't know how ridiculous she is.) 3. apparently really lovely to people she meets randomly according to MULTIPLE first-hand reports and 4. really into WWII radios, like, building them, repairing them, and using them.  
> 
> * 2)I don't know what the rules are for law enforcement officers? But every agency with professional/client boundaries prohibiting relationships I've encountered for things like medical and legal professions stipulate "Don't. Just don't. But if you're going to? You need to have not been in a professional/client relationship for a minimum of a year for it to not be a total ethics violation." But since I dont know what the rules are for FBI Agents and do not care to look, I used a year because it's pretty standard for things like doctors etc.  
> 
> * 3)Johnny Gosch - okay, there are a half dozen pieces of different and really excellent documentary media about the Johnny Gosch case but the summary is this: Johnny's playing out on the street in 80s Nebraska, a van drives up, grabs him, pulls him in during broad daylight, and Johnny is never seen or heard from again. This is the case that created the concept Stranger Danger in the minds of the American public and that's not an exaggeration. Now, many possibly even most people believe he was murdered but there's at least a decent body of evidence that a sex trafficking ring was involved in his abduction, one with a distinctly Epstein flavor to it that has since resulted in the confirmed "accidental" and "suicide" deaths of multiple people involved. I'm serious, journalists and potential whistleblowers have died while looking into the alleged trafficking ring that the case brought up and witnesses killed themselves or died suddenly accident or drug deaths(I legitimately cant remember which and I'm not looking it up right now- sorry). I make zero claims to knowing what the hell really happened to Johnny Gosch or if he's still alive, but the fact that it hasn't been a Buzzfeed Unsolved ep legitimately shocks me because it's got all the hallmarks of a legit Shit Be Weird situation. I strongly recommend the Sword and Scale episodes on the subject as a starting place. It's riveting stuff. It's also still something lots of true crime folks are obsessed over and very much one of the bigger and, honestly, more plausible conspiracies I've ever seen.  
> 
> *   
>    
> 


End file.
